Lorde: An Enchanted Encounter

By Lauren Smith

​At the ripe age of eighteen I was newly single from my first ever relationship, training for a half marathon, and desperately ready for a change. I remember playing Lorde’s debut album, Pure Heroine, on shuffle as I went for lengthy sunset runs through trails and trees with my best friend at the time. Her music feels electrifying- a means to escaping the drab normalcy of a teenage suburban lifestyle. “I love these roads where the houses don’t change, where we can talk like there’s something to say”, she sings. With an album out at the age of seventeen, Lorde connected intensely with the international youth who reaches for something more. Her painfully honest lyrics tell stories of the rush of adolescent house parties, young love, and the slow process of coming of age. Lorde sings of “counting dollars on the train to the party” and feeling “hollow like the bottles that we drain”, leaving her audience to image a scene of unassumingly fabulous high school girls drinking through the ‘burbs of New Zealand.

​On her second night of the Melodrama tour, after opening with hit single “Sober”, she explained that these massive parties were never all that, asking her crowd of adoring St. Louisans if they’ve “ever felt alone when a hundred people were in their house”. The vibrant community of fans that gravitate towards Lorde included a bearded man in a pink dress and trench coat and grown woman sporting space buns and a metallic rainbow top on this particular evening- the kind of confident, shimmering people who are ready to dance on a Friday night. Her lacy  black two-piece pantsuit was completed with a floor-length cape, emitting an aura somewhat relative to a brooding moon child. Lorde caught us up on her last few years, accepting that she’d always be a vivid dreamer and over-reactor and claiming that she’s learned a lot about herself before slowing it down for a stunning cover of Frank Ocean’s “Solo”. For the last few sets she jumped and danced around in a light pink tulle bodysuit that emphasized her every movement. After an explosive performance of “Green Light”, she left the eclectic crowd of Midwesterners feeling invigorated and unstoppable.